I'm the Chief Growth Officer at Prophet, where I've been a senior partner since 2000, helping clients as diverse as GE, Johnson & Johnson, Walgreens, State Farm and United Airlines win in the marketplace. I also spent 12 years at innovation/brand consultancy Kuczmarski & Associates, where I founded the Brand Asset Management practice. And prior to K&A, I worked at Procter & Gamble and focused on a number of top global brands. As this blog attests, I have opinions and a perspective that I'm not shy about sharing. What's endlessly fascinating to me is not just the ways marketing, brand and business strategies can come together in winning combinations, but how the human factor (let's talk the CMO) makes it all work ­ or not. That's led to numerous articles and several well-received books, including my most recent, "The Shift: The Transformation of Today's Marketers into Tomorrow's Growth Drivers." It's all about the conversation - comment or feel free to email me directly at sdavis@prophet.com.

What Patagonia and Sanuk Can Teach Socially Conscious Rookie Brands

If you haven’t heard of Coursera, maybe it’s time to get up to speed. It’s one of a growing breed of exciting brands intending to change the world. And they have a great chance of succeeding

They’re not focusing on “being green” and saving the environment. Nor are they adopting a cause that might fall under its corporate social responsibility program umbrella and is good for PR purposes and brand-building.

Their business is their cause. These brands provide products, services and solutions that are as important to their hearts as they are to their bottom lines. They’re applying disruptive innovation to create social change. They’re brands that stand for something more. And given the vast majority of consumers’ preference to do business with socially responsible concerns, they may have a leg up.

Coursera is obviously not the first to make their business their cause. Stalwarts like Patagonia, Tom’s, Sanuk and Ben & Jerry’s have all blazed the trail, as have more recent brands such as Kiva and Teach for America. These brands have strong moral compasses and are aligned with missions and visions. They’re consistently putting proof points on the board as to why their consumers should choose their brand over the Haagen-Dazs’ of the world when all else is equal (or close to it).

As I look at a few of these newer examples, I can’t help but caution them to look to the past to help guide their future. Let’s look at two of these “rookies.”

Coursera, just a little over a year old, is an online, for-profit education company that’s on a mission to make advanced education available and free to everyone. The mantra of its founders is that education “should be a right, not a privilege.”

It’s a concept that resonates: In December, enrollment surpassed 2 million; it was setting a brisk pace of 70,000 new students a week signing up for more than 200 courses. Coursera has enlisted over 60 elite universities from around the globe (Princeton and Stanford among them) to lend their faculty to teach. What’s attractive are the easily adopted intuitive platforms designed by the founders, computer science professors at Stanford.

And while Coursera leads the pack in the red hot education technology market, it’s a market that’s hugely dynamic – the lead may not last. Figuring out how to make money while staying true to its underlying cause may create challenges, even though investors (it’s brought in over $22 million in venture capital) aren’t worried at this stage as monetization is not the highest priority. Obviously, a key to the stalwarts’ success is forming aligned partnerships that matter. Partnerships that can help push the cause forward and are a win-win for each brand. For B&J, it’s celebrity partnerships and flavors. For Patagonia, it’s using its brand ambassadors and heavy social media marketing to do some of the heavy lifting for them. Coursera will need some heavyweight education zealots (think of the twoBill’s, Andre Agassi or Oprah, all of who have dedicated some of their lives’ mission to this cause) or align with institutions that matter (think of Cleveland Clinic and Mayo’s partnerships with upstart hospital systems) to truly take their businesses and causes to the next level.

The founders of Warby Parker have used the power of the Internet to say “Take that!” to the industry leaders they believe are keeping prescription eyewear artificially high and unavailable to those who really need it. (That translates, they say, into 1 billion people around the world.)

It opened its e-commerce doors in 2010 at a time when less than 1 percent of eyewear was sold online. By creating a way for customers to virtually try on frames using a photo, or the old fashioned way of shipping them for at-home try on, the company has effectively overcome a major barrier to e-commerce success for this particular kind of business. And its success is effectively disrupting the status quo.

Interestingly, Warby Parker’s approach may well serve as a model for other businesses bringing new, and potentially equally disruptive ideas to the market. The wider issue there, Tech Crunch noted, will be others’ ability to bring prices down enough to drive demand, not to mention the ability to build their brands. Once again, Warby Parker, which just began advertising, can serve as a model, having built its brand on the back of a stellar customer experience.

Sanuk’s and Tom’s are two great examples Warby Parker can look to as legacy successes with this model. Each has created a ton of social buzz through their buy one, donate one business model, both have transcended the category and both have gotten celebrities and athletes alike to use and push their product harder than any advertising campaign could. In addition, they innovate consistently, have pushed hard into the fashion world and have Zappos-like customer experiences, while still keeping their moral compass pointed north.

Social enterprises like Coursera and Warby Parker are beginning to capture the public’s imagination with their intentions to do good by doing well. The best outperform others on three fronts to win the hearts and minds of customers: creating emotional engagement, delivering exceptional experiences, and, for some, dogmatically upholding social objectives that sync with what their business stands for.

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The real innovators and disruptors have been at it for years, but don’t have or choose to have huge marketing/branding budgets behind them. Patagonia is the best of the best, but giving away a pair of glasses is an act of charity, not social change. Look at Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee Company, Equal Exchange or many of the SME’s dedicated to using business as a vehicle for social change to get a real insider’s view.

I agree with your point Dean, especially as their continue to be studies that come out that explicitly state that Millenials in particular or looking to work with authentic and transparent brands that are doing some good in society–whether societal or charitable. Thanks for reaching out.